


The Draco Redemption Knitting Club

by vive_la_revolution



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family Bonding, Gen, Good Draco Malfoy, Knitting, POV Draco Malfoy, Unless I write more, Young Draco Malfoy, also just so you know draco IS in love with Harry Potter but that's not the focus here, young luna reforms young draco via the wonders of knitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27793066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vive_la_revolution/pseuds/vive_la_revolution
Summary: "Draco Malfoy did not associate with Luna Lovegood. Despite this, his cousin refused to learn the definition of "personal space," preferring to inform him on the dangers of nargles at every opportunity. Instead of Vincent and Gregory flanking him when he went off to pick a fight with Harry Potter, Luna would trail him until he'd have to abort the mission. Nobody could be properly intimidating with some loon following them remarking on imaginary creatures hiding in the rafters."Draco has a talk with Luna about how she's ruining his reputation, and somehow he ends up in a two-person knitting club where she teaches him how to make a scarf and he whines about Harry Potter.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic idea just absolutely possessed me and I had to write it. I hope that somebody else out there enjoys it!

Draco Malfoy did not associate with Luna Lovegood. Despite this, his cousin refused to learn the definition of "personal space," preferring to inform him on the dangers of nargles at every opportunity. Instead of Vincent and Gregory flanking him when he went off to pick a fight with Harry Potter, Luna would trail him until he'd have to abort the mission. Nobody could be properly intimidating with some loon following them remarking on imaginary creatures hiding in the rafters.

It was only his first year at Hogwarts, and already people were looking at him wrong. They weren't looking at him like someone fearsome who should be respected; they were looking at him like there was something funny in his hair. If Luna was to be believed, apparently there was.

It was simply unacceptable!

He had to put a stop to this ridiculousness before it was too late. He had to get a handle on his image again and get back to harassing Harry Potter. To do that, he had to… actually talk to Luna.

Cue shudder.

But he was certainly no wuss, so one Saturday he waved off Gregory and Vincent after lunch and went in search of Luna. He'd hardly turned a corner before she materialized in front of him.

"Hello, Draco," she said pleasantly, shoving her glasses up her nose. They covered half her face, and made her eyes look as big as saucers, and had the same coloring as a flamingo.

"What do you want, Luna?" he couldn't decide whether he wanted to try to be pleasant or not, but he sneered out of instinct and it was too late to take it back. Oh well.

She didn't seem to notice. "I just wanted to say hello."

"No, I mean why do you keep following me?" Draco crossed his arms and glared at her.

She blinked. "We're cousins."

"And?"

She shrugged. "I figured we'd look out for each other. Hogwarts is a very dangerous place, you know. As a matter of fact-"

"Yes, yes, I don't need another lecture." Instead of looking appropriately hurt at the interruption, Luna just nodded and smiled. "I don't want you following me around."

"Oh, why?" He hadn't realized it was possible, but her eyes got even wider. They were like small plates.

He sniffed in the dramatic and self-important way his father did. "We might be cousins, but we aren't friends."

Then her brows furrowed and her shoulders sunk and her lower lip trembled and Draco couldn't help but take it back.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, don't cry!"

Then he wanted to take _that_ back, because if anyone caught him trying to reassure Luna Lovegood, he'd never be taken seriously by Harry Potter again. Their whole rivalry would be over before it could even begin.

It simply wouldn't do!

"Oh, come on, Luna!"

"Don't you snap at me!" Her voice was raised, but more in the way someone stage whispered than in the way someone yelled. "It wasn't nice of you to say what you did."

Draco looked up and down the hallway. "Oh, fine, I know it wasn't. I'm sorry for saying it. Will you not cry now?"

And then Luna was smiling, which was disturbing in and of itself because she'd truly been on the verge of tears only a moment before and her eyes were still watery. Then, horror of horrors, she rushed forward and caught him in a hug.

"So we are friends?" she asked in that obnoxiously soft voice of hers.

Draco waited a long moment before he said anything. He could say no, and she would cry, but that wasn't his problem, and then she wouldn't follow him around anymore. His father never liked Luna's family anyways, so it wasn't like they were proper cousins even.

"Yes," he said, quietly, and with great reluctance.

"Oh, good!" Luna squeezed him tighter for a moment before letting him go.

"But if we are friends," he added hastily, "then we should both be nice to each other, right? And… it bothers me that you follow me around, so that's not very nice, so don't do it anymore."

"Oh, okay!" Luna smiled brightly at him. She had a look in her eye that he didn't quite like. "And since we're friends, we should spend time with each other and teach each other things. I could teach you about the thestrals-"

"No thestrals, _please_ ," Draco said with feeling.

"Oh." Luna looked lost in thought, like she always did. "Why?"

"Er… I'm not really interested in magical creatures." It wasn't untrue. Draco didn’t have the patience for them.

"Oh, I see. Then… oh, I know! I can teach you to knit."

Draco snorted. "We aren't nearly advanced enough in charms to do _knitting spells_ , Luna."

She shook her head exuberantly. "I mean without magic. It helps your magic, though, or so my Mama used to say. She taught me. She said knitting needles are a lot like wands really; you just have to focus and use them properly, and you can make whatever you put your mind to."

Draco very nearly sneered and spat out something scathing at the idea of doing manual labor without magic, but he stopped himself at her mention of her mother.

It had barely been two years. He knew Luna missed her mother dearly, and she would be deeply hurt if he insulted her memory.

He didn't know what he would do if he lost his mother.

Maybe he really could learn to do magic with a knitting needle? Or something. He could do it for her, and her mother, and his mother too, in a roundabout way.

"Okay," he said hesitantly. "You can teach me to knit."

Luna smiled in a soft way that was probably the equivalent of beaming for her. "Great! If I can't follow you around, when will we learn to knit?"

"In an empty classroom somewhere, I'll think of something. I'll… owl you."

Her eyebrows raised. "We both live in the same castle." Before he could even come up with a response, she smiled and said, "I like the way you think, Draco."

Didn't that bode well for him.

\---

Weeks later, and Draco could still hardly knit anything. He mostly procrastinated on her "lessons" by talking to her about anything he could think of, but she always wanted to work on a project, and if she was working on something, she would make him work, too.

"You just have to wrap the yarn around the needle, and then pull it through this loop here-"

"How did you do that? Do it again, I didn't see it."

"Like this."

"Do it again."

"Hmm. I think you can see what I'm doing. Try it yourself."

"I can't see it!"

"Okay. Look, see, you wrap the yarn- you understand this part?"

"Yes, I can see you wrapping the yarn around the needle, I'm not _stupid_ -"

"Okay. Then you just pull it through-"

"You're not pulling it through anything, though! You're, like, pushing it against the other needle!"

"Okay. Then you just push it through-"

"Through what?"

"The loop."

"What loop?"

\---

Draco did not tell his parents that he was meeting with Luna. He also did not tell anyone else. He thought about asking Luna not to tell anyone, but at some point before he thought to, he realized that she didn't have anyone else to tell. Not that he could blame anyone, exactly, with her massive glasses and blank stare. But it struck him, still, as… not sad. He didn't feel bad for her. But it struck him, was all.

\---

"Why are you always rude to Harry Potter?"

"Hello to you, too, Luna," Draco said irritably, sitting down beside her in the old classroom they'd commandeered that was always empty but always clean. The wonders of house elves. "He's self-righteous and doesn't deserve nearly all the attention he gets. And he's shit in potions even though it's an easy class because he's one of those people that thinks you should be able to pass a class without having to learn anything."

"I see." Luna handed him a half finished scarf which he'd been working on and she'd been keeping because he was not risking someone finding it in his dorms and asking him why he was poorly hand-knitting an ugly wool scarf. "Here you go."

"Thanks," he said, not meaning it at all as he picked up his scarf and started sticking the needles in the loops and wrapping the yarn and pulling through the loops and… it was tedious work.

He didn't know why he still put up with this, sometimes. He could just yell at Luna and she would go away forever. But then he thought about her mother, and all the people she talked to who never said anything back, and the perfect shade of Slytherin green wool she'd bought for this ugly scarf, and he couldn't make himself do it.

It was getting easier, anyways.

\---

Draco didn't finish his scarf until just before the winter holidays.

"I could have finished it faster," he insisted, thinking about how many different things he'd seen her finish over the course of months. "It's just that _I'm_ so busy with my classes that I don't have an excess of free time to spend."

"I see," Luna said, her voice lightly cheerful. "I made you a Christmas gift."

Oh. "I didn't make you anything," he said sheepishly.

"I don't care, Draco," she said, pulling a little parcel from her bag and holding it out to him. Reluctantly, he took it and opened it.

Somehow, it wasn't one of the things he'd seen her work on during their meetings. Where did she find the _time_ …?

It was a pair of mittens, in that same Slytherin green as the scarf he'd made. They were painfully plain, and he wouldn't be caught dead wearing them in front of anyone important.

"Thank you, Luna," he said quietly. He had to blink, as all the dust in the room was irritating his eyes.

She did that little not-really-a-beam-but-it-could-be smile and reached out to pat his hand. "You're welcome, Draco."

\---

On the night before Christmas, Luna received an owl carrying a tiny parcel. She opened it up, and found a small knitted bookmark in the same color as her favorite pair of glasses. It was still marking her place in _Myth or Magic: The Imaginary Line Between Wizardry and Mythology_ when she returned to school in the spring.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, yeah. I was totally unable to resist writing more. also, I realized that Luna actually is a year below everyone and shouldn't be at Hogwarts for another year, but I've decided that I'm just going to disregard that. she went to Hogwarts a year early bc she's Just That Smart

Draco’s Christmas had been splendid, thank you very much for asking. He’d gotten everything he’d asked for and plenty of things that he hadn’t: he just knew that everyone at Hogwarts was going to be jealous of him. Even Harry Potter! He couldn’t wait to go back and show everything off.

Well, not quite _everything_. Luna’s mittens were still tucked away in a corner of his trunk. They were ugly little things, after all.

Now that he was back home with his parents, he kept wondering why he let his nosey, obnoxious cousin bully him into learning to knit. After all, it wasn’t his problem if she didn’t have any friends. There was a reason for it, obviously. She was… nosey and obnoxious, and wore painfully clashing clothes that were far brighter than clothes should ever rightly be. _And_ she was obsessed with magical creatures that didn’t exist, which made her loony, like her father.

Draco had the very strong impression that his parents wouldn’t be proud to hear about their association, even though she was his cousin. She was… well, she was like his other cousins. She wasn’t the _right sort of wizard_. Or witch.

Although, he supposed that she wasn’t quite so bad as his mother’s family. Her sister had abandoned her own family just to marry some mudblood, or something. His mother refused to even talk about it. He didn’t even know what his cousin’s name was on that side. At least his father didn’t seem to have that same level of resentment towards Luna’s mother.

He didn’t ask them about it. They never asked him about it, because why would they? He was a good son; he didn’t give the _wrong sort of wizards_ the time of day.

\---

Draco had every intention of ending his… whatever was going on with his cousin. He never sent her an owl to make plans to meet, and he didn’t acknowledge her in the halls. That lasted for about a month.

In the morning, just as he was leaving the great hall for class, an owl he didn’t recognize delivered him a piece of blue parchment. He tucked it in his bag and forgot about it for hours.

That night, he pulled out his Potions textbook to study and saw the mysterious blue parchment sitting at the bottom of his bag. In a silver script, it read:

_Cousin,_

_I was thinking we should come up with code names. I know that you like to be secretive, and I think that it would make it much easier to communicate without ruining the game. I’ll be thestral, and you can be dragon. I know that you don’t like magical creatures, but I think that it would suit you._

_I haven’t heard from you, but you seem to be fine. Is your owl injured? Are you plagued by Wrackspurts? You can get rid of them by thinking of happy memories. I always think of my mother and her laboratory; you might think of your mother._

_I’ll be in our classroom tonight, and tomorrow night. I’m there most nights. I don’t know when you might be busy with schoolwork or your Slytherin friends, but you can come whenever you’d like. I’ve been wanting to teach you to knit a hat; it’s not harder at all than knitting a scarf, but the needles look different._

_Your dear friend,_

_Thestral_

Draco frowned at it for a very long time. Then he folded it, shoved it back down in his bag, and studied his Potions textbook.

\---

Draco didn’t feel guilty. He didn’t have any reason to feel guilty. Luna and himself weren’t _really_ even friends. She just bullied him into knitting a scarf, and made him a pair of mittens, and gave him suggestions on how to banish imaginary creatures. _Imaginary_ . She apparently thought she was plagued by them too. As if. What even _was_ a Wrackspurt?

It was that curiosity that drove him to their classroom two nights later, _not_ guilt or sentimentality. He just wanted to hear her crazy theories about Wrackspurts. It would be a good laugh, and then he would go back to his dorms and tell his real friends about it.

He nodded to himself as he opened the door to the classroom. As she’d said in her note, she was already there, knitting. Whatever she was working on was full of holes. He couldn’t tell whether that was intentional or not.

“What even is a Wrackspurt?” he asked. He closed the door behind him because even if it was for a laugh he didn’t want anyone to know he was talking to her. Then he crossed his arms, to look intimidating and mean.

She looked up at him and smiled. He shifted uncomfortably and glared at the floor.

“They’re invisible creatures that buzz around your head,” she said. “They make your head fuzzy and confused and can make you feel things you don’t really feel.”

He scoffed, suddenly a little bit offended. “Did you think I’ve been… fuzzy and confused all month?”

She shrugged. “You seemed to be having a hard time in Charms. You’ve always been the best at Charms.”

He couldn’t decide whether he should get offended again or preen. “Are you complimenting me or insulting me?”

She looked up at him again and frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m good at Charms,” he said indignantly.

“Yes,” she said, looking confused, “I just said that you were the best.”

“Then why did you think I had Wrackspurts?”

“You’re the best at Charms, but you weren’t doing as well in class as you were before. Something was keeping you from doing your best.”

Draco glowered at the floor. He hadn’t realized that anyone had noticed that he’d been struggling with picking up the new Charms they were learning. But it wasn’t as if it was his fault that Professor Flitwick had no idea how to properly teach a mending charm! It wasn’t even a particularly necessary charm, anyway; he’d never needed it before. Unlike _some_ people, he wasn’t a klutz who constantly broke things.

“And you didn’t write,” Luna added quietly.

Draco looked back up at her and sneered. “Yeah, that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? Well, _I’m_ not the confused one.”

Luna looked at him. Her ridiculous big glasses made her eyes look even wider than they probably were. She was waiting for him to say more, and his mouth suddenly felt dry.

“I have Potions homework,” he said suddenly, surprising himself, before he turned on his heel and left the classroom.

He didn’t have any Potions homework. He’d finished that essay hours ago.

\---

“Focus, Draco,” Pansy hissed at him. He could tell that she was getting angry with him. “The spell isn’t hard. You’ve got the movement and your pronunciation is right; you’ve just got to _focus_.”

“I am focusing,” he said, angrily swishing his wand in the correct movement again. “Reparo.”

The broken teacup in front of them remained infuriatingly in pieces. Pansy groaned with frustration.

“I don’t understand why this is so hard for you,” she said bitterly. “You’re normally the one that’s good with charms. I don’t know how to help you.”

He gritted his teeth. “Thank you for nothing, Pansy.”

She shoved him hard in the shoulder, then repaired the teacup herself. “It’s not my fault you can’t learn a simple charm for no good reason, idiot.”

“Whatever, Pansy,” he said. He had to go write a Transfiguration essay.

\---

Hours later, he had not written his Transfiguration essay. He had, however, written and rewritten a very short note close to a dozen times.

_Thestral,_

_I’m sorry for leaving abruptly the other night. I had forgotten about the Potions essay until the last minute._

_You’re right that I’m not doing well in Charms. I just can’t get the mending charm for some reason. I know that you’re good at it; I think you’re the best in the class after me. I’m going to the classroom tomorrow night. Meet me there if you can._

_Dragon_

\---

Luna was already in the classroom when he showed up that evening. She didn’t look up when he came in, focused on her hole-ridden knitting project.

“Hey, Luna,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“Draco,” Luna said. She still didn’t look up.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said, not sure what else to say.

“Hmm,” she said. He fidgeted, slowly setting his bag on the floor by the table they both usually shared.

“What are you making?” he asked. Was she angry with him, or was he just being overly sensitive? It wasn’t as if it was unusual for her to be distracted and short, her head off in space.

She didn’t answer him.

“Luna?”

She looked up at him, and now he was certain that she was angry with him. “What do you want, Draco?”

Draco swallowed. “Well, I had been wondering if you could help me with the mending charm.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed a bit, the closest thing to a glare that he’d ever seen on her face. “I know when someone’s just trying to use me, Draco.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. When she realized he wasn’t going to say anything, she just looked back down at her knitting again.

Well, she wasn’t kicking him out. He sat down across from her, pulled out his History of Magic textbook, and started reviewing. Neither of them spoke to each other, not even when they both left for curfew.

\---

He went back again the next day because he felt like he had something to prove. He didn’t know what it was, exactly, but he sat across from her and worked on his Defence Against the Dark Arts essay in silence for an hour that evening.

\---

And the evening after that.

\---

And the evening after that.

\---

“Why do you keep going off on your own?” Crabbe asked. Draco should have expected someone to ask sooner, but honestly, he had expected that they might have been too stupid to notice. Crabbe and Goyle could hardly function like regular people when put together.

He shrugged. “Studying.”

“Oh, the library,” Crabbe said.

“Hmm,” Draco said. Crabbe took that as a confirmation, and Draco had a moment of intense panic in which he wondered whether he was beginning to pick up on Luna’s mannerisms. If he ever started wearing vegetables as accessories, then he’d know that this had all gone too far.

\---

The next time he was on his way to meet with Luna again, he wondered why he was still doing this. She didn’t even want him there, and his parents wouldn’t approve. But, in a roundabout way, wouldn’t they be pleased if she wasn’t? He was irritating her by being around her. He associated with her just as he associated with Harry Potter or Neville Longbottom: like a thorn associates with someone’s side.

Yes. He was a thorn in her side. That was suitably dramatic.

\---

“Luna,” he said, very seriously. She looked up at him. “I know that we’re… not exactly friends right now, or something, but I have got the _best_ gossip about Harry Potter and- no, don’t make that face, you’ll love it, I promise. But I can’t tell anyone else, because I’m planning something, and I don’t want it ruined. But you’ll love to hear this, I promise.”

“Hmm,” she said, giving him a look that he was choosing to interpret as non-judgemental. At least she was looking at him; he’d sort of expected her to run off in a fit.

He grinned at her and paused for suspense, lowering his voice and leaning forward when he spoke. “Harry Potter is helping Hagrid hide a _baby dragon_.”

Luna’s eyes widened, which made them look absurdly large since they were magnified by her oversized glasses.

He nodded, just barely preventing himself from squealing like a little girl. It was exciting, not his fault! “I heard him and his friends talking about seeing a dragon hatching. And they mentioned Hagrid, and someone finding out what he was doing, so I knew they were hiding something. And then they just went straight to Hagrid’s, so I was able to follow them easily. They didn’t pay attention at all. And I found a window that I was able to look through without them seeing me, and there was this massive egg on the table that they were all watching. And then it hatched! This ugly black creature came out of it. It had the brightest, creepiest orange eyes I’ve ever seen. Then they saw me, and I had to run, but anyway I’ve already seen it and they can’t do anything about that now.”

Luna sort of smiled, and Draco refused to feel relieved about that. “I thought that you didn’t like magical creatures?”

“I don’t,” he said, firmly. “I’m just excited to use this to get Harry Potter in trouble. He thinks he can just break the rules and get away with it, but he can’t.”

Luna’s smile dipped into a frown, and Draco refused to feel guilty about that. “You’re going to report the dragon?”

“Well, obviously. It’s illegal.”

Luna looked like she was going to cry. “Why? It hasn’t done anything. Somebody might hurt it. And Hagrid would be in so much trouble! More than Harry Potter.”

Draco shrugged. “Then he shouldn’t have brought an illegal magical creature onto school grounds. It’s not my fault that he did.”

“It will make Harry Potter hate you even more,” Luna said, seriously. He gave her a weird look.

“Yes, Luna, that’s what I’m trying for,” he said like she was stupid.

“Hmm,” she said, and he glared. She smiled.

\---

“I’m going to teach you to knit a hat.”

“But what about the-” he stopped himself at the look she gave him. Maybe she hadn’t quite forgiven him for making her feel like he was using her for help with Charms.

“Okay,” he said.

\---

“The dragon bit the Weasley,” Draco said as he sat down. He was very pleased with himself. “He had to go to the hospital wing. I went to visit him, to ‘borrow a textbook.’” He snickered, putting air quotes around the last three words. “Apparently he told her it was a dog bite. As if! Pomfrey’s smart enough to know better. I can’t believe she let him get away with that.” He shook his head.

“Hmm,” Luna said. She was nearly done with her weird knitting project, which Draco could now recognize as a lacy shawl.

“I still have his textbook,” he added, pulling it out of his bag. He didn’t need it, of course, but he thought it was funny that the Weasley was going to have to ask for it back. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t; it was a Potions textbook, a class which Weasley quite obviously put no effort into at all.

He flipped it open, curious to see whether the Weasley had any notes written in it or anything else interesting.

A folded piece of paper fell out, and Draco opened it excitedly. It was a letter…

_Dear Ron,_

_How are you? Thanks for the letter—I’d be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won’t be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn’t be seen carrying an illegal dragon._

_Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it’s still dark._

_Send me an answer as soon as possible._

_Love,_

_Charlie_

“The dragon’s a Norwegian Ridgeback,” he said absentmindedly.

“Wow,” Luna said. “Did you know that they’re one of only a few types of dragons that can see Dabberblimps?”

“Hmm,” Draco said. “I’m going to get them caught red-handed.”

\---

“Are you upset that Harry Potter got away with it?”

Draco rolled his eyes at Luna. “Of course not. He lost enough house points anyway that everyone hates him.”

“You lost house points too,” she pointed out.

“But we’re still going to win the Cup,” he said smugly.

“Hmm,” Luna said.

\---

“Bloody Dumbledore!” Draco was pacing in their classroom, hands clenched into fists. “That was completely unreasonable! Obviously preferential! Groundless! Indefensibly biased!”

“Hmm,” Luna said, smiling faintly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this little update!!! please let me know what you think of it and thanks for reading <3 <3


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